


His eyes

by kate_the_reader



Series: His sun [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Art, Learning to be in love, Learning to love oneself, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 13:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20836373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: Crowley is still intrigued by pictures Aziraphale made of him throughout their millennia of pining. And then — newly willing to be vulnerable — he offers to pose for one.An epilogue toHis sun.





	His eyes

**Author's Note:**

> mycitruspocket and MsBrightsideSH are the best encouragers and first readers. Much love and thanks to you both, darlings.
> 
> As before, something made by another member of this wonderful fandom was a spark in this. It's linked in an endnote.

"Angel," says Crowley. He delights in saying this, saying it often, just as he delights in Aziraphale’s "Crowley?" or "Crowley!" or "Crowley…"

"Angel," he says. "I haven’t been searching, rooting about among your books, but I wondered …"

"If you could see other portraits?"

"Well, call me vain," he says, "but yes. I have."

"Call you vain?" There’s a look of such tender teasing in Aziraphale’s eyes that Crowley preens to make him laugh, and is not disappointed.

Thinking of the portraits, which rattled him so when he didn't understand them, didn't properly understand Aziraphale's heart, mostly makes him smile now. Admittedly not the one they have not yet looked at together. Perhaps one day they will be brave enough. But the others — now he knows why Aziraphale made them — he admires the skill. And is undone by what they represent.

"I didn’t draw them so often in later years. When you were close, I had less need. But I did make one when we were looking after our young Warlock." He smiles fondly. "You were so very lovely then, my dear, and I wanted to capture yet another way you changed, and still remained you."

"Just as you did, angel. I wasn’t the only one who changed."

"Well …" Aziraphale blushes, "I made a silly disguise, but you, dearest, you revealed another aspect of yourself. You were breathtaking."

Crowley doesn’t allow himself to linger on Aziraphale’s praise, wrapped as it is around self-deprecation. "You made a delightful disguise to hide in, angel."

Aziraphale smiles and drops his eyes and flicks them back up at Crowley, and Crowley no longer has to resist that look. He leans over and kisses Aziraphale, quick and light. He wants more, of course he does, but he’s nervous to presume. And even a kiss like that — more than he ever thought he would give, or receive — sends his brain skittering off the rails.

It’s only hours later that he remembers. "You were going to show me another picture."

"So I was, until I was distracted." Aziraphale threatens to do it again, but Crowley turns away from temptation. 

"What book’s it in, then, angel?"

Crowley recognises the book Aziraphale hands him. _The Graveyard Book_*.

"Warlock loved this!" he says. 

"Yes, he told me you read it to him."

"Very suitable, I thought. A child raised by unusual guardians."

"Yes indeed," says Aziraphale, leaning closer and opening the book’s back cover.

The little painting is vibrant. Nanny Ashtoreth smelling roses tumbling down against a garden wall.** 

"That was a good hat," says Crowley, to cover the extra wave of fondness that sweeps over him. He clears his throat and adds: "And a very talented gardener tended those roses."

Aziraphale bumps his shoulder against Crowley’s. "You did look very fine in that hat, my dear."

*

Something Aziraphale said about the pictures snags in his mind and he keeps coming back around to it.

"You had less need to portray me, when I was close?" he asks.

"In the beginning, I never knew when I would see you again."

"But you couldn't even keep those pictures. You told me, in a patch of mud …"

"That seems to have bothered you, my dear."

Crowley knows he's being teased, and he likes it. "Well, _mud_," he says.

"I used what I had," says Aziraphale. "It wasn't the having, it was the making. To fix you in my mind. To know you."

"And now you don't need to?" 

"I don't _need_ to."

Finally, Aziraphale has caught his drift. He should just come out with it.

"Would you like to?"

"Draw you?"

"Yes. Just … because."

"Crowley, are you offering to pose for me?"

Crowley shrugs. "If you want."

"Oh, Crowley." It's like a drug, that fond tone.

He will also never tire of Aziraphale looking at him, really seeing him. He never wears glasses when they’re together now. At first, it was difficult. He felt naked, vulnerable. It gets easier, feeling naked and vulnerable in front of Aziraphale. He does want to feel an even more concentrated looking. He waits for Aziraphale to name a time and a place.

"Perhaps in your chair, my dear?"

"My chair?"

"Yes, your chair. The one you like."

They’re still feeling their way into this new thing. The thought that he has a chair, his chair, in Aziraphale’s shop — he has thought of it as his favourite chair, but that Aziraphale has too — brings him up short.

"Crowley?"

He shakes himself. "Yes, anywhere you want. Wherever you think. My chair. Comfortable." He’s rambling, and there it is again, that look on his angel’s face.

"Be comfortable, my dear. I’ll just fetch my things."

It’s evening, the shop is closed (properly closed that is) and lit by just a few lamps casting pools of golden light. Crowley retreats to his chair to wait. He pulls his legs up and curls into the soft leather, closes his eyes and drifts, until he feels Aziraphale right there. He’s standing holding a sketchbook clutched to his chest.

"I hardly dared to hope," he says. "I hardly dared to hope that I would ever be able, be allowed, to do this, like this. Thank you." 

Crowley doesn’t trust his voice to answer.

Aziraphale steps back, towards his own chair. He opens the sketchbook on his knee and lines up a pencil and a pen on the chair’s arm. "It’s been a while," he says. "It may take me some time."

"Take all the time you need," says Crowley, his voice only a little rough. "How do you want me?" He’s not trying to tease, but a light flush rises from Aziraphale’s neck, sweeps over his face. _If he does the eye flick thing …_

"You’re perfect, just as you are."

_Oh, two can play at this game. _A hot blush steals across his own skin.

Aziraphale picks up the pencil and looks steadily at Crowley before making a mark on the paper. It is easier than he feared it would be, to be the object of this kind of looking. Crowley does like it. He holds his pose, leaning back in the chair, his eyes on Aziraphale, tracking every tiny expression as he works with the tip of his tongue caught between his lips. It’s a good thing Crowley is sitting down.

"How did you learn?" he asks, "to do this?"

"I just did it. That day, after we parted. In the dust. I erased it straight away. It felt wrong."

"But you kept doing it?"

Aziraphale raises his chin. "A rebellion. Until it stopped feeling wrong."

"Sin’s like that. If you do it long enough." He says it lightly. He still needs to deflect from emotion sometimes.

"It stopped feeling wrong because it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t a sin. Just as loving you isn’t a sin." Aziraphale is flushed and vehement. "But it took me a long time to understand that," he says, softer. "And far too long to act on it."

"Well. Guilt. That side’s good at guilt."

"Yes. Even for things that aren’t sins." 

Aziraphale bends to his task again and they remain in silence for some time.

"That very first day?" says Crowley, returning to the other part of what Aziraphale said. 

"Yes. I thought … I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I just wanted you back."

"I wanted to come back. But we were more dedicated to our jobs back then, I suppose. Kept us apart. I used to think of reasons to bump into you."

"I suspected."

He thinks of the second time they’d seen each other, after such a very long time. "You would have had plenty of mud after the Flood, I suppose, to draw in," he says, mostly to make Aziraphale laugh again.

"Tip-top mud." Crowley laughs too.

"I stalked you in Rome, you know."

"I made a quite lovely portrait of you there. They had these ingenious wax tablets. Very clever idea. Although hard to save."

They lapse into silence again. Crowley is content just to watch Aziraphale, the warm lamplight caught in his curls, a tiny frown between his eyes.

Eventually Aziraphale straightens, smiling softly at the sketchbook.

"May I see?" Crowley unfolds himself and stretches, steps round behind Aziraphale’s chair to look over his shoulder. He doesn’t know what to expect.

Aziraphale has made his eyes the whole picture.

There’s no colour, but they are slit-pupiled serpent’s eyes. He forces himself not to flinch away, and the more he looks the more he notices the other things. How carefully the lines around his eyes have been rendered, millennia of chaos and knowing, loneliness and longing etched there. And how even without other features, it is clear that Crowley is looking at his beloved. 

"Crowley?" says Aziraphale. It’s one of his favourites, that tender inquiry.

"It’s a lot. To take in."

"Too much?"

"No. No, I understand. But … I don’t go around admiring myself, looking in mirrors."

Aziraphale raises an eloquent, disbelieving eyebrow.

"To do my hair, of course. But not just to _admire_ myself." He wishes he didn't have to deflect from the emotion of seeing himself, but it's hard.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't tease." Aziraphale reaches up over his shoulder and Crowley gives him his hand. "Thank you for allowing me to do this. To have you right here in front of me, so trusting, so open, as I looked, was a precious gift."

"I liked you looking. You saw right into me. It's all true, what you put into this picture." Crowley's breath is short. "I hid it from you for so long."

"No, Crowley, you told me every time we saw each other. And I turned you away, so often."

"You were still trying to do the right thing, trying to follow their rules." He steps out from behind Aziraphale’s chair, kneels in front of him. "It was easier for me to love you. To admit it, to myself. But you helped me …" He stops. It is very hard to say this. He takes a deep breath. "You have helped me to like myself. To start to like myself."

Aziraphale looks at him with such tenderness, with such pain, that he can’t bear it. He drops his face, resting his forehead on Aziraphale’s knees. Aziraphale’s hand lands lightly on the back of his skull. "My dearest." His voice breaks a bit. "My love."

**Author's Note:**

> * [The Graveyard Book](https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-graveyard-book-9780747594802/) by Neil Gaiman is enchanting in the unsettling way his books for children are, and of course Nanny would read a story about an orphan raised by kindly ghosts to Warlock, wouldn't she?  
**The painting of Crowley when he was Nanny Ashtoreth is [here](https://tuherrus.tumblr.com/post/186986114732/nannys-hissing-at-the-flowers-in-the-garden-again)


End file.
